Three people’s lives are about to intertwine in a devastating way.

Sajid Khan is the father of Aliyah who has disappeared after entering the United States in the company of another young woman who has just died in a devastating suicide bombing. He finds himself heading to the US himself to find his daughter.

Greg is a veteran from Afghanistan who is part of a terrorist network who has just made its first strike but is preparing for a much larger attack. But he is having his doubts, especially as he has fallen in love with Aliyah. He is determined that they need to get away – but can he convince Aliyah.

And Agent Shreya Mistry is the only person who seems to be spot the links in the chain. But somebody in the agency seems determined to keep her as far away from the investigation as possible…

OK, so we’re firmly in thriller territory here. There’s plenty of twists and turns but it’s not a mystery per se. No problem with that, I love a good thriller. And this is an excellent thriller.

It’s almost entirely focussed on the three characters mentioned about, with chapters alternating between them – actually, it’s often two consecutive chapters per character, which was oddly slightly confusing for this bear of little brain, although luckily the chapters are labelled with who they’re focussed on.

Abir Mukherjee is best known for the Sam Wyndham series set in post WWI India and as co-host of the Red Hot Chilli Writers podcast with Vaseem Khan. This book takes him away from the historical setting and right up to date. In some ways, scarily so – modern thrillers always seem to have a bit of lag on them with current events, yet this could have been pulled from today’s newspapers.

And that is my only problem with the book – it was actually a really uncomfortable read. Nothing in the plans of the terrorists seemed unbelievable – well, maybe the final reveal of the grand plan – and Mukherjee does a magnificent job of getting right under the reader’s skin. I got the same feeling at times that I occasionally get when I try and read true crime books, a really unsettling feeling that it takes a really talented writer to evoke.

In many ways, this is an essential read. The characters are believable, not just the three that we get to know well, and there’s far more going on than you might expect. For example, there’s a scene at roughly the midway point that would be the finale in a lot of books, but there’s far more plot to come after that.

All in all, this is quite some achievement. I don’t know that I’ll rush to read it again, but I will be making time to go back to the Sam Wyndham series very soon.

Hunted is out this Thursday from Random House in hardback and ebook. Many thanks to the publisher for the review e-copy via NetGalley.